Anti-immigrant fear mongering has gotten Kellie Leitch lots of attention, but it hasn't done her poll numbers any favours.

The Conservative leadership candidate has been grabbing headlines the last few months talking about her controversial "anti-Canadian values" test – that's an ideological purity test for immigrants cribbed from Donald Trump.

One thing no one will dispute is Leitch's Trump impersonation has generated heaps of media attention.

An analysis by PressProgress looking at Canadian media coverage of the Conservative leadership race so far shows Leitch has easily commanded more attention than any of her rivals.

Since the first leadership candidate declared their intent to run on April 6 until October 21, Leitch has generated 1,349 news stories about herself, about 200 more than her closest rival – Maxime Bernier (1,160 stories).

Trailing Leitch and Bernier, former House Speaker Andrew Scheer generated 440 news stories during the same period while Michael Chong generated 437 stories. Brad Trost (228) and Deepak Obhrai (207) generated the fewest news stories of Conservative leadership candidates who have officially registered.

Another recent poll places Leitch fifth in a field of eight candidates.

One reason for the mismatch between heavy media coverage and bad polls could be because there is, in fact, such a thing as bad publicity – and Leitch is getting absolutely hammered by it.

Analyzing media coverage of the debate Leitch has sparked on "anti-Canadian values" shows that coverage has been overwhelmingly negative, considered a barometer of how people and ideas are being perceived.

Between August and October 2016, two-thirds (65.4%) of all news stories described "anti-Canadian values" using negative language.

Less than one-quarter (23.5%) of media coverage has discussed the idea using neutral language while only one-tenth of the coverage has described Leitch's ideological purity test in positive terms.

So while there might be method to Leitch's madness, it's not clear doing a bad Trump impersonation is a particularly good method.